


Princess

by theinvisiblequestion



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Post-Mass Effect 3, Refuse Ending, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-18 12:07:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2347907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theinvisiblequestion/pseuds/theinvisiblequestion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Normandy flees Reaper territory, but a close call with a destroyer at the mass relay hurls Shepard through time and space. She falls in with mercenaries, and a few people she never thought she'd see again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Shepard squinted into the fog. Her visor display showed four Reaper marauders closing in. She crouched behind the fallen tree trunk, even though the fog was so thick that all she could see of EDI three feet to her right was the orange glow of her visor. James, on her left, was completely shrouded. "EDI, how far out is the Normandy?"

"Three minutes," EDI replied.

"Commander," James muttered. "They're getting closer."

"They can see as well as we can," Shepard said. "And you have the advantage of a heads-up display." She cursed herself for not slapping a heat scope on her pistol. Four good, quick headshots with her Carnifex and those Reaper bastards'd be dead before they knew what hit them.

She had one other option, but she'd need all four marauders dangerously close.

"Lola," James warned. "These bastards get any closer and we're toast."

"Not on my watch." Shepard clenched her off hand, gathering dark energy in purple-blue swirls. "Fall back, you two."

James and EDI moved in unison, away from the tree and the advancing Reapers. Shepard waited as long as she dared before she jumped up, vaulted over the tree, and slammed her charged fist into the ground with a yell. The blast threw three of the marauders back; the fourth was still a couple of yards away, a shadow at the edge of the fog that had already begun to creep back in. Shepard lunged into it with a biotic charge, loosing a shotgun blast in its gut to make sure it was dead. By the time she turned around, EDI and James had finished off the others.

The radar showed no other movement, and Shepard could finally hear the whine of the Normandy's engines. She brushed a chunk of Reaper corpse off her leg as her ship's thrusters blew away the fog. James jogged up the cargo ramp, followed closely by EDI and Shepard. As soon as the ramp shut, Shepard tugged off her helmet and hit the quick-release buttons on her armor. It fell off in a heap, smearing mud and blood on the floor of the shuttle bay.

"Damn, Lola. I never seen anyone get out of armor so fast."

"And I've never seen anyone get out of armor so slow." Shepard cleaned off the worst of the muck with the sonic hose and carried her armor to an alcove surrounded by crates. She'd clean the rest of it after she ate, just herself, her armor, and a bucket of hot, soapy water. She might even sponge-bathe first; she didn't have the luxury of a real shower any more. Resources were scarce these days.

* * *

 

She'd finished her chestplate and helmet when someone knocked on the cargo crates she'd sequestered herself behind. "I won't bite," she answered.

Liara stepped into Shepard's nook, looking better than she had last time Shepard had seen her. The asari had taken a heavy beating from a Reaper platoon a few weeks back; without Dr. Chakwas' excellent grasp of xenomedicine, the galaxy might have lost its Shadow Broker. "Hey, Broker. What's the news?"

Liara sat down on a box. "I just wanted to see how you were doing. We haven't talked in a while."

"It's a war, Liara, and I'm not sure it's one we can win." She scraped her fingernail across a stubborn bit of dirt. "I think I should have used the Crucible."

"And deprive the galaxy of its greatest hero?"

"At least there'd be a galaxy."

The comm crackled to life. "Commander, we're approaching the relay."

"Any word from the Council?"

"Not yet. We're still trying to get the QEC back up and running."

"Well, let's hope the Reapers don't get to _Switchboard_ before we do. Carry on, Joker."

Another crackle told Shepard the comm had closed. "We need a comm specialist," Shepard said. Sam Traynor had taken a blow to the head a week ago, and was currently relearning her own name. "How are your data feeds?"

"They're dwindling fast. I do what I can, but at the moment, it's not much. I've told all my agents that _Switchboard_ and communications are the top priority, but I don't think interstellar communications will last the year."

"I know. We're lucky we've held out this long."

"Javik says..." Liara's cheeks darkened. "Well, he said something about us primitives having more valor than he originally gave us credit for. He didn't expect us to last this long."

Shepard smirked. "Are you sure he was talking about the war?"

"Shepard!"

"Don't worry, T'Soni. Happiness is hard to come by, but don't feel guilty."

Liara laid a hand on Shepard's knee. "And you?"

Shepard's smile was as tired as the galaxy's fighting forces. "I'm alright," she said. "We knew it was going to happen."

The comm crackled to life again. "Commander, you'd better get up here. I'm reading Reapers on our tail."

She dropped the rag and the bracer into the pail and jogged for the elevator, Liara close behind. "Get to the relay, Joker."

The elevator lurched toward the command deck. "They're blocking our approach vector!"

"Then pick a different one!"

The ship shook violently, throwing Shepard at the wall. The air seemed to ripple and crackle in front of her, and then the ship shook again. Shepard's head slammed into the ceiling of the elevator, and had just enough time to notice Liara hadn't gotten in the elevator before the room went as black as dark space.


	2. Chapter 2

Shepard woke in a prefab bedroom. The door had been left open a few inches, and light from the room beyond spilled through—just enough to see that the room had all the standard bedroom furnishings. She sat up slowly, easing herself off the bed. The voices in the next room weren't loud enough for her to make out words. She crept toward the door, staying in the shadows.

"I'm telling you, it's not worth it," said one. He spoke Alliance Standard. "An M-8 with a couple of mods will outstrip any M-9."

"Stripping's the only thing an M-8's good for," argued another, who spoke something other than Alliance Standard—English, maybe, or German. "Put the mods on an M-9 and you got a perfect killing machine." He snorted. "Not that I'll ever afford one, with what I earn."

Someone else laughed, a gruff chuckle, but said nothing.

Shepard heard a gun collapse, and then Alliance Standard said, "Well, I'm gonna go check on our guest."

Shepard shuffled back to the bed, careful not to make any noise, and sat. She rubbed her eyes when the door swung open. The man who walked through the door wore scuffed blue armor with a white sunburst splashed on the chest. His face showed hints of Spanish heritage. He looked familiar, but she couldn't possibly know him. The Blue Suns were gone, save for a few fringe packs making themselves useful at refugee camps.

"You're awake," he said. "Good."

"Where am I?" she asked.

"Let's start with who you are, and how you ended up on my front door."

"My name's Hannah," she said, adopting her mother's name. "I don't know how I ended up here. I was on a refugee transport and I fell asleep."

"Ain't no refugee transports out here. Just colonists. You some kinda duster?"

"I don't dust," she said. "I'm a biotic; I don't need to."

"Sure, whatever. Where are you from?"

"Earth."

He glanced over her. "North America?" he guessed.

"Vancouver," she confirmed.

"Where were you headed?"

"Don't know," she said. "Look, I don't want trouble." If this was a dream, it didn't matter what she did. If it wasn't, she'd want to keep out of trouble.

He grunted.

Shepard ran fingernails on the back of her neck. Her amp port was empty; she'd taken out her amp while she ate and forgotten to put it back in. "What's the date?"

"October fifth on the Alliance calendar. You any good with a gun?"

"I know my way around most of them."

"You'll start with a pistol," he said. "I'm not wasting good equipment on some hotshot newbie princess."

Shepard's stomach made noises; she'd been out a while.

"Wait here," he said. He closed the door when he left, and came back a minute and a half later with a blond-haired man in a sleeveless underarmor shirt and cargo pants. The tattooing on his arms was sparse, but spanned from shoulder to wrist.

"Take her down to the mess first," the merc told his companion. "I don't want her shaking like a leaf when she's got a gun in her hand. And see if you can't find some old armor that fits her. After that, you can go—"

"Stuff it, Santiago," the other merc said gruffly. "I know what I'm doin'." His voice struck Shepard like a Reaper destroyer full in the face, and when he turned to leave, she found herself stuck to the floor, staring. "Come on, princess."

Shepard followed, dazed. Vido Santiago had died, killed in a fire set by the man walking in front of her—who, come to think of it, had also died.

"Can't believe Vido's making me show a goddamn newcomer around like I'm a fucking _tour guide_ ," he muttered. He threw a hand toward a shelf full of rations. "Grab a pack. Our cook's out on patrol, so it's rations for lunch."

Shepard grabbed a ration pack and sat at a table. The merc sat down across from her with a ration pack of his own. She studied his face, and found a familiar scowl in the way he looked at her over his fork.

"Hey!" he snapped. "I'm talking to you."

"Sorry. I'm a little confused. What's the date?"

"October fifth," he said. "By Alliance calendars, anyway."

"The full date, I mean."

"You don't know what year it is?"

"I must have hit my head."

"2164."

Shepard shook her head. "No, it's not. I—" She looked around the mess; no one looked remotely aware of massive galactic war or the imminent extinction of all organic life. The disorientation twisted her stomach into knots. She pushed away the rehydrated rice-and-beans ration pack.

"Rubbish bin's behind you," said the merc, pointing with his fork.

"What?"

"Rubbish bin. Right there."

She blinked. "No. No, I'm fine. I just—I got a little disoriented is all. I'm fine."

The merc shrugged and tucked back into his food. "So, princess, you got a name?"

"Hannah," she lied. "You?"

"Zaeed Massani, if it please milady," he answered mockingly. "Vido tells me you were having a little nap on our front porch."

"That's what he told me. I don't remember." She stabbed a shriveled-looking bean with her fork. "Falling in with mercs probably doesn't come under 'don't get into trouble'," she muttered.

The merc sitting across from her—young, handsome, whole—shifted in his seat. "Eat," he commanded. "And quit staring at me."

"Sorry. You just... you look like someone I used to know."

"Musta been a handsome devil," he grumbled. "Got you grinnin' like a fuckin' loony."

Shepard smirked into a mouthful of rice. "Yeah, I guess."

The merc shoveled a forkful of something vaguely meat-like into his mouth. "Maybe I oughta get someone else to show you how to shoot a gun, if you're gonna get distracted."

"I won't get distracted," she said. "You don't look that much like him." She ate a few more bites and rolled up the ration pack.

Zaeed didn't take her ration pack or her fork, only showed her what to do with them. He called her _princess_ four times in five minutes explaining to her how things were gonna work around here, but never held the door for her. He quizzed her on the workings of a pistol, and criticized her technique when her results were too good for his liking. He found old, dusty armor in the back of a closet somewhere and gave it to her with an impossibly short deadline for its repair. He put her in an empty bunkroom on Vido's orders, and forgot to tell her where the bathroom was.

* * *

A grumpy, impatient commander took over her training on her third day. He treated her like she was just another stupid green recruit, regardless of how many bullseyes she hit, though she noticed that her fourth day of training seemed more like an assessment than instruction. After a week of jumping through hoops (and shooting through some), Vido handed her a pistol and a datapad. "Go find Zaeed and tell him you need your ink."

"My ink?" she asked, snapping the pistol to her hip.

"That's what I said."

Shepard glanced down at the datapad. It contained a lengthy contract for services. It appeared she had already signed it: ten fingerprints, neatly lined up next to a false name. She tucked the datapad into her belt, nodded to Vido, and left to find Zaeed.

The layout of the merc base had gotten Shepard turned around more than once her first few days, until her daily route had gotten burned into her brain. She started looking in the mess, though she hadn't seen him there or anywhere in the last couple of days. The mess was too crowded, and Shepard too unfamiliar with Zaeed's young face, and the merc had time to get up and walk out the opposite door before Shepard spotted him. She pushed her way through raucous laughter and noisy eaters, but the hallways beyond the mess grew like roots, twisting and branching and doubling back on themselves.

Five minutes later, she stood in a hallway junction, turning in slow circles, trying to decide which way to go. She took the left turn, followed the hallway to the right, took a left at the next junction, walked straight as far as she could, and took another left, only to find herself back at a four-way junction. It looked suspiciously like the junction she'd stopped at last time. She tried going right this time, and soon found herself at a similar four-way intersection. She wondered if it was the same one.

Her omni-tool beeped, a blanket notice from Vido about payday being pushed to Monday. Shepard looked at the hallways around her, empty as a ghost town, picked a wall, and sat against it. Someone would come along eventually. Probably.

Hours crawled by. Shepard played a stupid game on her omni-tool, and then another stupid game. She sang six rounds of Mordin's favorite patter song, and had started into the third verse of _Krogan Queen_ when she heard footsteps coming down the hallway.

"What the hell d'you think you're doing?" demanded a familiar, irritated voice.

"I was looking for you," she said, getting to her feet. "I got lost."

"Fuckin'—" He shook his head. "What do you want?"

"Well, I'd _like_ to get un-lost, and Vido said I'm supposed to get inked." She showed him the datapad.

"Maybe we'll ink a map on the back of your goddamn hand," he grumbled.

"I'd settle for one on my omni-tool," she answered.

Zaeed just shook his head and walked off. "Keep up, princess," he growled, marching through the twisting hallways ahead of her.

"Hey!" She jogged after him. "What the hell's your problem?"

He turned on her, his face contorted into a sneer. "Don't talk to me like you know me. I'm the goddamn general around here, and you're a recruit—a goddamn footsoldier. Just because Vido thinks it's funny to make me babysit some space princess don't give you leave to act like we're friends. Got it?"

"Yes, _sir_ ," Shepard replied.

Zaeed fiddled with his omni-tool for a few seconds, and then Shepard's beeped. "There's your fucking map. Don't get lost again." He stormed off, leaving Shepard to figure out where to go.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skip to the last couple of paragraphs if you don't like descriptions of the kind of violence that might crop up when six people and a tank fight a thresher maw. It's not terribly graphic, but death by thresher maw isn't a fun way to go.

"Flush," Shepard announced, laying out her hand. "And clean, too."

The three other men at the table threw down their cards. One grunted disapprovingly before getting up and walking out for a smoke. The one who would deal next collected the cards and started shuffling. The third filled his glass at the sink.

"You're too damn good at this," said the shuffler. "Shame we can't get Massani in on a game. He's the only one who'd actually have a chance against you."

Shepard laughed. "No, he wouldn't."

The drinker downed half the glass of water in one long gulp. "How would you know? You haven't been here long enough to see him play."

"I've seen him fight, and the way a man fights tells you how he plays cards. You fight and play cards long enough, you'll figure it out." She shrugged. "Besides, I bet he prefers dice."

She stacked her chips in a neat grid, feeling the stares of all three of her Skyllian Blitz buddies.

"Now, how the fuck do you figure that?" asked the smoker.

"He just seems like a dice kind of guy," she said. "I've met a lot of dice players. Most of them end up converting to cards when they're older, after they've been shot a few too many times."

The drinker filled his cup again. "I think I'm gonna hit the sack," he said. "I'm on patrol tomorrow in the 'skirts." He downed the water and tossed the cup among the pile of other dirty dishes for whatever pathetic soul earned the extreme disfavor of dish duty.

Shepard checked the time. "That late already? Guess it's past my bedtime, too." She pushed her chair away from the table. "Next week, maybe I'll teach you three a real card game."

Her bunkmate was fast asleep when she tiptoed in. She pulled off her boots, stashed them in her locker, and set her omni-tool to wake her in time to suit up and chow down. It buzzed and beeped and flashed half a minute after she fell asleep. Her bunkmate was long gone, and she'd time traveled six hours into the future. Shepard got into her armor, snapped her shotgun and pistol to their holsters, and trotted out to the mess for breakfast.

She looked for Gaziano, but her commanding officer was nowhere to be found. She took her ration pack over to the table with the rest of her squad. Zaeed's intrusion on their table took her by surprise.

"Is there a reason you're chumming with us low-life footsoldiers?" Shepard asked. " _Sir_?"

"Yeah," Zaeed growled. "Your commander got half his foot blown off yesterday, so he's in the med bay getting patched up. Since no one else seems to know how to hold a gun around here, I'm taking his place on this run. Got it?"

Shepard nodded. The other four at the table appeared to be preoccupied with their breakfast packs. Zaeed's sulk radiated from him like a field, indignance at being stuck with a raiding party when there were plenty of commanders to run the shakedown. The general only went on the most brutal missions. Someone hadn't paid up.

* * *

Zaeed continued sulking while Heidel drove. His bad mood crushed any thought of making conversation until the ground started to shake.

"Fuckin' earthquakes," he muttered after the third shudder.

"That's not an earthquake," Shepard told him. "Stop the tank."

Zaeed didn't second the command, and Heidel kept driving. "What?"

"Stop the tank. Make it think we're dead."

The tank slowed, much to Zaeed's discontent. "Keep driving. The fuck are you on about?"

"Holy hell," breathed Heidel. "Sir, we've got something on our radar, and it's big."

"It's a thresher maw," said Shepard. "Stop the tank, or we're going to get blasted into next century, and you don't want to go there."

Heidel stopped and Shepard jumped out. "We have to split up," she said.

"Are you insane?" balked Mander.

"The varren that chases two pyjaks catches neither," she said. "Not to mention the tank is a massive target compared to one person."

"Yes, and it's got armor."

"Trust me when I say that the armor on this tank isn't going to do shit against maw acid."

Zaeed jumped down out of the tank and stormed up to Shepard. "Who the hell d'you think you are, ordering my men about?"

His attempts to intimidate her only irritated her more. "I'm the only one here who's survived a maw attack. Five, actually, and three of those I killed." The ground shook, and Shepard crouched to stay on her feet. "This'll be six, and four, if you _do as I say_."

"Nobody's ever killed a thresher maw!" Mander cried.

"I don't have time for this." Shepard unholstered her shotgun and started walking. After a few dozen steps, she heard Zaeed start issuing orders. When Shepard looked back, four men walked away from the tank, all in different directions. She heard chatter in her helmet. "Shut up," she told them. "It can hear you."

Mander laughed loudly. "Yeah, right. Now you're just—" A quake interrupted him just before the earth below his feet erupted. The maw erupted with a roar, throwing Mander into the air. A long blue tongue shot out and grabbed his ankle, pulling the merc into its throat, armor and all. He screamed in his comrades' helmets until the maw's acid dissolved the comm.

"Everybody hold very still," Shepard murmured. "Maws are blind, but they're not stupid. They can track you by the vibrations of your footst—" The tank's engine roared to life, and Shepard swore loudly. "Shoot the tongue!" she yelled.

"But that'll piss it off!" Heidel complained.

"Remember the varren chasing the pyjak?" Shepard started running, a zigzag circle. "You shoot that fucker until you can't get a shot in or until it looks at you, and then you run until it's safe to shoot again. Everybody does that, we might make it out alive." Shepard threw a warp field into the maw's open mouth and it ducked, burrowing underground to find a new target. "Hold still!" she ordered, but she knew where the maw would strike next.

The maw's face caught on the broad side of the tank, flipping it sideways in an arc. Miraculously, it landed gun-up, with its driver still awake enough to fire that gun straight into the maw's open, angry mouth. The angry screech of the maw turned into a stream of acid that covered the entire front end of the tank, dissolving hull and engine parts alike. Shepard hoped Zaeed had the presence of mind to stay still for half a minute while the others drew fire. The maw shrieked when Heidel's grenade launcher pumped a high-yield payload right onto its mouth. Shepard and the others tried to draw fire—Yan even went so far as to fire a few high-velocity sniper rounds—but Heidel had gone too big, too fast. The maw arced over the field and dove right on top of Heidel, crushing man and launcher equally and burrowing straight back into the ground. Still, the explosive had left a gaping wound in the maw's flesh, and it looked much the worse for wear when it came up again, right in the middle of the last three runners. It swiveled its ugly head around, trying to pick a target, but like the distractable varren, it wouldn't catch these pyjaks. "Yan, Amon, I think our friend's hungry." Shepard pulled out her pistol, wishing she'd brought a rifle. Still, she had the benefit of experience. Her comrades didn't. The maw, angered by the peppering fire, loosed a stream of acid, smaller and weaker than before, but still just as deadly. It caught Amon in the side of the face. The force of it still knocked him senseless before the acid ate through his helmet and his skull.

"Zaeed, you still with us?" Shepard asked. "Now would be a great time to—"

The tank answered with a missile, headed for the maw's face. The thing turned toward Yan's sniper fire just before the missile struck, and most of the damage fell on hard scales. The maw turned its acid blue tongue toward the tank again, and Shepard had only a fraction of a second to react.

She'd never created a full-blown singularity before. Small, weak ones she could form in abundance, but never anything like Liara's. But it was the only solution she could think of. She shot it right into the maw's mouth, in the opening of its tongue. The force of the singularity was enough to trap the tongue and close it off before it could spew acid at the tank. She held it as long as she could, giving the tank time to reload and ready another missile.

"Any... time..." she grunted. Yan still fired sniper rounds at the maw, but his efforts were little more than pinpricks.

"Firing." Shepard held the singularity as long as possible, then pulled it toward her as she let it go, giving the missile enough time to jump down the maw's throat before it could recover and re-aim its tongue. This time, the explosion caught all the soft infrastructure of the thresher maw's head, blowing chunks of skull and brain into the air. Shepard dodged the fleeting hailstorm of flesh, rolling sideways when the falling body shook the ground.

The quiet rang in her ears, and then she heard Zaeed breathing heavily. She scanned the field for Yan, but the maw's acid sac had come down next to him and burst, splattering him from head to toe. Shepard checked his unmarred side for a pulse, but the shock or the blood loss or the acid itself had killed him.

"Four down," she told Zaeed, walking toward the tank. "How's the truck?"

"Engine's down. Took the comms with it. Still got a gun, though. Few more big shots."

"We won't see another maw here," she said. "Not for a few decades, anyway." She knocked on the tank door.

The hydraulics still worked. "No room at the inn," Zaeed joked, his foul mood banished by a good fight.

"Not even for someone who just killed a thresher maw?"

"I'm the one who fed it the silver bullet."

"You'd have been dead long before that without me." Shepard looked up into the sky. The grim clouds spat raindrops on her visor. "Plus it's raining and I kinda don't have anywhere to go."


	4. Chapter 4

"Plus it's raining and I kinda don't have anywhere to go."

Zaeed shrugged. "Fair point. Climb in."

Shepard pulled off her helmet as the door slid shut. "What's the situation in here?" she asked, shaking out her sweat-damp hair.

"Not good," he replied. "That goddamn beast knocked out the engines, main power, and comms. We got emergency power and emergency rations, and it's raining."

"Guess we wait it out." Shepard pulled a high-energy ration bar out of a pocket at her belt and wolfed it down.

"You any good at field medicine?"

Shepard nodded. "Queen," she said through her food, pointing at herself with the half-eaten bar. "Gimme a mo'." She pulled off her gauntlets, chewing down the remainder of the ration bar, and wiped her mouth with a hand. The ration bars never left a mess, but old habits died about as easily as old mercs. "What'd you do?"

"Foot caught on the console when the tank flipped. Think I busted something." He lifted the foot in question, but Shepard saw nothing out of the ordinary.

"I can't treat armor," she said.

"Are you asking me to take off my trousers?"

Shepard shrugged. "I really only need you to get the boots off, but if you think you need to, I won't blame you."

He winced getting the boot off his bad foot. "Goddamn space princess," he grumbled.

"Socks, too," she commanded.

He pulled off his socks, gritting his teeth. "You spend a lot of nights in tanks like this?"

"A few." She looked at both feet. After a quick exam, she said, "Looks like you got lucky. It's just a sprain. I'll wrap it up and it should be fine by tomorrow." She found an "idiot's hypo" of medi-gel in the medkit, touched it briefly to the side of his swollen ankle, then wrapped the foot up in a bandage.

"Thanks," he said, pulling his socks back on. "Better already."

"That's just the medi-gel," she said. "Local anesthetic."

"I know." He took off his gauntlets and tossed them on the floor next to the driver's seat.

Shepard stowed the medkit and started to pull off her armor. Zaeed turned back to the console, fiddling with the useless buttons and knobs. "What happened to your good mood, Massani? Don't tell me this storm's gotten to you already."

"Yeah, well, I'm stuck up in here with you till it's over, ain't I? And four of my men just died, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Your men? That was my squad. Who do you think's gonna have to tell Yan's wife he got killed by a thresher maw? Amon's sisters? Hell, Heidel only got married a few weeks ago." She threw her greaves at the floor with surplus force.

"You think I don't know all that? I'm not some desk jockey, princess. I've seen a hell of a lot more than you know."

Shepard snorted. An irritated reply pressed at her lips, but the white lights of the medbay and the white fingers of her grumpy merc drained the words out of her, and she just sighed and went back to dismantling her armor in silence. She pulled the emergency kits out of their compartments and set about making camp while Zaeed got out of the rest of his armor. She'd dug out some ration packs and started in on another of her energy bars when she noticed Zaeed fiddling with the console again, still wearing his chestplate.

"You gonna wear that to sleep, too?" she asked.

"What?" He looked down at the armor. "Oh. Yeah, I might."

"You can't reach the latch." Shepard thought he'd been joking all those times he'd asked her to help him with his gear.

He grunted, annoyed.

"Do you want some help?"

"Well, I don't want to sleep in my goddamn armor, do I?"

Shepard folded her arms over her chest.

"Are you gonna help me or not?" he scowled.

"I might. What's your deal?"

"I think they call it classified."

"With me," she clarified needlessly. "You've got a problem with me."

"And what if I do?"

"You might want to either unpack it or stow it, because we're stuck here until this storm blows over."

He got up and limped to the rations. "I don't generally mix my work and my fun," he told her. "My line of work, shit like that gets people killed. I'm not gonna get myself killed over some space princess like some big goddamn hero out of a fairy tale." He yanked the ration pack open and made a face at its contents.

"I don't see the problem," she said, sitting on the bench next to him. "I don't know if you noticed, but there's a dead thresher maw right outside the door, thanks in large part to some space princess and some big goddamn hero." Shepard reached behind him and unlatched the chestplate. He shrugged out of it and tossed it toward the rest of his armor.

"Thanks." He looked at her when he said it, and she kissed him, long and hard and hungry. He took a few seconds to recover, and then his ration pack hit the floor with a soft thud. The fork clattered down next to it as Shepard ran a hand over his stubbled jaw and threaded her fingers through his hair. One of his hands rested on her waist; the other went to the back of her neck, and jumped away when it touched the still-hot amp. "Fuck!" he swore, pulling away from her. "How d'you stand it?"

Shepard spit on her fingers and pulled the amp out, dropping it on the bench behind her. "Sorry. You get used to it after a while. Should be safe." She leaned toward him again, but he avoided her.

"Let a man finish his supper, will you?" He took her other hand from his neck and kissed it sensuously before he dropped it and picked up his food.

A thunderclap rolled across the roof of the truck. "Did you drop the ground wires?" she asked, glancing at the ceiling.

Zaeed snorted. "This ain't my first day on the job." He made a face at his ration pack. "Christ, I hate these things."

"I can't even taste them any more." Shepard opened hers and tucked in. "You've never seen a biotic after a real fight," she said between bites. "I can put away five of these, easy, and that's after an energy bar or two."

"And how many of those have you seen?" Zaeed asked. "Real fights?"

"More than enough." She stuck her fork in her half-eaten ration pack and set it on the bench beside her, appetite lost along with all her friends. "Maybe too many." She shivered; without her amp creating feedback loops in all her systems, her body temperature had plummeted. She grabbed a blanket and sat on one of the camp mats, pulling the blanket tight around her.

Zaeed's eyebrows pulled together. He rolled up his empty ration pack and bent the fork around it. "Who the hell are you?" he asked.

Shepard stared blankly at him.

"I know what kinda shit you fed Vido, but I don't buy it myself."

"Zaeed—"

He sat in front of her, knees pulled up inside his arms, and linked his fingers together. "You've been acting like we're best friends, you and me. You're a hell of a fighter, princess, but I don't know who you are."

"I'm not sure I can tell you, and I seriously doubt you'd believe me."

"I've seen a lot of things in my life nobody would believe. Hell, I saw some idiots shoot down a thresher maw today with nothing but half a tank and some goddamn space magic."

"Before I woke up in that bedroom inside the base, it was 2189."

Zaeed blinked. "You're shitting me."

"I shit you not. I was commanding an Alliance frigate called the Normandy. She was an upgraded copy of a Normandy built by turians and humans in the early 80s. The galaxy was invaded in the mid-80s by a race of synthetics from dark space hell bent on destroying all intelligent life in the galaxy. I had the honor of uniting and then leading the galaxy in the war that followed the invasion. We were losing when I—last I knew."

"You are shitting me."

"I wish I was. I lost a lot of friends in that war. Both of my parents."

"You're serious."

"Dead serious."

"Fuck."

Shepard adjusted the blanket, pulling it closed around her and burying herself in it up to her ears. "And that's the kiddie version."

"You can keep it," he said. "Forget I asked."

"I will if you do."

He put up his hands in mock surrender. "I'll give it my goddamn best."

Another thunderclap rolled through, deafening even through the tank's thick armor. Zaeed looked up at the ceiling. "Sounds like a hell of a storm out there," he said.

"I haven't been in a thunderstorm in years. Hell, I haven't been in the rain in over a year, either." She went to the driver's console and opened the front shutter. Blackness ruled, except for the brief moments of lightning that flashed purple across the sky. Shepard pulled her knees up into her blanket and sat on the driver's seat, watching the lightning flash.

Zaeed limped over to her, peering out the window. "Hell of a storm," he repeated. "Glad I'm not out in it." He limped back to the camp mats and stretched out on one. "You can see it from here, you know."

Shepard looked over her shoulder and smiled. Zaeed had tried to pull a blanket over himself, but without unfolding it all the way, it only covered part of him. "Are you cold already?" she asked.

"Might be. Maybe you ought to check. Make sure I'm not going into shock or something." He wrestled with the blanket a little, tugging at one corner with his good foot until it unfolded the rest of the way.

Shepard obliged, kneeling next to him and laying a hand on his forehead. "Hmm. You seem a little warm." She laid two fingers at his jaw. "And your heart rate's gone up." She leaned close to his face, checking his eyes. "Your pupils are dilated," she murmured. "But they look even, so you probably don't have a concussion."

Zaeed lifted himself on one elbow, pulling Shepard closer with his other hand. He kissed her, his lips warm and wanting. Thunder rolled overhead as they kissed, and she pressed onward, tongue darting across his lips to catch between his teeth. His reluctance vanished, and he dropped onto the makeshift pillow again, dragging Shepard down with him. The glow-pack had begun to dim, and within minutes they were fumbling at each other's underarmor in the dark. They had turned off what systems they didn't need, to save power, so it was too cold to strip completely. Shepard tugged at Zaeed's pants, dragging his underwear down with them. He grunted as he sprung free, hard and erect against her. She threw a leg over him, straddling his hips. His hands groped at her waist for purchase; he tugged at her waistband until she pulled off her own underarmor and underwear. They kissed, and as her hips ground against his, his erection rubbed satisfyingly against her. He growled and bit at her lip, muttering something about games.

She grinned and stuck a hand between them, guiding him into her. She beat a slow rhythm until he got impatient, hips begging her to move— _move, goddamn it_. They rocked together, and came together, their cries drowned in a booming thunderclap. She buried her face in his neck, but he had not yet acquired the musky smoke-and-blood smell she was so familiar with.

A bolt of lightning beyond the front window gave them each a flashbulb glimpse of the other, tangled together, still wearing their shirts. Shepard separated herself from him, feeling around on the bench above their heads for her amp. She found it and slid it back into its port, shivering when it clicked into place. Zaeed found the other blanket and pulled it over himself. He'd put his pants back on, too, and she slipped back into hers before the heat she'd generated with him was lost to the storm. Shepard dragged her camping mat up alongside Zaeed's and crawled under her own blanket. Another flash of lightning lit the inside of the truck, but Shepard was suddenly too tired to get up and close the shutter.

She woke in the middle of the night, freezing cold despite the extra heat from her amp's feedback. Zaeed shivered next to her, his teeth chattering audibly. She threw her blanket over him, slipped beneath both blankets, and pressed herself against his back, hoping her body gave off more heat than she felt. He woke slowly, his shivers turning into shrugs.

He grumbled and tried to brush her off.

"Shut up," she snapped. "I didn't save you from a thresher maw to let you freeze to death."

"'M not gonna freeze to death," he answered grumpily, turning toward her and elbowing her away from him.

"No, you're not, but you'll be miserable by morning and I don't want to listen to you gripe all the way home." She threw a leg over him, pulled the blankets up to her eyes, locked an arm around his waist, and settled into his chest. He struggled feebly and then gave up, pulling a corner of one blanket up to his chin. He draped a warm, heavy arm over Shepard, and went back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! This is the last chapter for a while. I'll be on hiatus until Christmas at least. But, then, if you've been reading fanfiction, I'm sure a couple of months isn't the longest you've ever had to wait for an update.
> 
> In the meanwhile, thanks for all your lovely reviews, and I hope you've enjoyed our space princess and her big goddamn hero so far. There ARE more shenanigans for them to get up to, I promise.


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